


planting peonies

by yogurtgun



Category: John Wick (Movies)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Mutual Pining, Rough Sex, emotionally constipated fools
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-28
Updated: 2019-01-28
Packaged: 2019-10-18 12:57:32
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,375
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17581280
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yogurtgun/pseuds/yogurtgun
Summary: John was efficient. Perhaps too efficient. The Serbs saw a chance for success in allying themselves with the Italians. John had been traded like common goods. Then the Italians lifted their paw and crushed the Serbs’ whole operation in one fell swoop. Two years into his contract with the Italians, John met Santino.





	planting peonies

**Author's Note:**

> I was really curious about Santino and John's history. The sex is just a bonus.

The Tasarovs didn’t find John first, the Serbians did. John supposes that even he had trouble distinguishing them at first except for the obvious: their moves and their accents. The similarities by contrast, were much bigger. There’s nothing like the criminal world to have a rampant problem of inbreeding. The Serbians spoke Russian, drank like Russians, and most of them had that particular rough-faced look all Russians, in his experience, had. 

Later, John will understand that those similarities were only skin deep. Unlike Russians, who had generations to get used to the new fertile grounds of New York, the Serbs were mostly first or second generation immigrants. They liked it that way. They preferred to import new blood from the home, as they liked to call Serbia. New blood was hungry for scraps, and would be hungry still in ten, fifteen years until they let down their roots. 

The first meeting wasn’t particularly interesting. John had been living under a bridge and two guys wanted someone to harass. The homeless in New York never catch a break. They were young, John would think about later, when he’d return to his blankets and watched them bleed out in dirty piss-covered gravel. 

Other men came looking for them. They didn’t attack, though John knew they wanted to. John got a sandwich, and they asked him if he wanted a job. “Good thing we’re not Albanians. They take blood debts seriously,” said a man John will latter known as Pavle, a slavic construct for the name Paul.

At the time, John had known he couldn’t take all the fire power they’d had, and so he went into the unassuming sedan, and later walked into the warehouse. 

Unlike the other soldiers, who wore street clothes but had close cropped hair and bomber jackets to hide the bulk of guns they carried around, the man he was sat in front of was older and no more sentimental. 

John signed a contract, a dumb thing to do at the time, but his choices were limited. Working for the Serbs was better than not working at all, he supposed. That, and he’d hate being gunned down two steps from the warehouse. 

He was set up in another warehouse until he proved himself. He got a room with a bathroom, clothes, cash and a phone. After his first job, he got a gun.

One thing John could count on in separating Serbians and Russians, he would later think, is their particular hatred for one another. John had served the Serbs long enough to learn both languages and to know that when they talked about their brotherhood, it did not include their overlords. 

John focused on not getting killed. He understood the politics, but he didn’t get involved, not even when he’d been invited home my lieutenants for a family meal. That’s what separated Serbs and Russians as well. They saw each other as brothers. Like a large family of distant cousins. Most pitied John for not having that connection, though they did try to bring him into the fold. After a while, they stopped trying. 

John was efficient. Perhaps too efficient. The Serbs saw a chance for success in allying themselves with the Italians. John had been traded like common goods. Then the Italians lifted their paw and crushed the Serbs’ whole operation in one fell swoop. 

“You mind?” he’d been asked by his soon to be handler, Lorenzo.

John had shrugged. The Serbs weren’t sentimental. Neither was John. 

The Italians, he supposed, used him better than the Serbs every could. They had reach and they had history in ruling. Massimo D’Antonio was an old bear of a man who ruled ruthlessly and only appreciated strength. 

John didn’t mind killing. Not in any way that it might have bothered other people. After a long time wandering without purpose, having to kill someone for someone else was as good of a purpose as any. 

The Italians wanted to expand in New York. John, if nothing else, had an ear for languages, and picking up Italian and Neapolitan was key to knowing what was going on around him. The D'Antonio's were hunting a seat at the High Table; the expansion and a good foothold in the new world would allow them that. 

At first, learning about the parallel world of crime and mafia had been dizzying, mostly because it sounded incredibly improbable and morbidly amusing. It was bad theatre. It proved real enough when he had to dodge bullets. 

Two years into working under the D’Antonio’s John wakes up to a flurry in the nest. A guest, Lorenzo tells him, high up on the branch, maybe Massimo himself. That day, John meets Santino. 

-

Santino has green eyes made grey with steel and ruthlessness, he has a pretty smile but a cruel mouth, strong fingers and a way of using them to make John ache. 

This is a bad idea. Both of them know it. But Santino is careless, and John has left rationality somewhere in Bagram, on the front porch of a bombed preschool.

“What did the Russians call you again?” Santino asks, three fingers stuffed inside John. It’s not many men who have ever made his knees tremble, and only one in this way. “Baba Yaga was it? Careless of them to give you away.”

John wants to correct him but his answer gets lost somewhere in his lungs where it’s traded for a whimper and a groan. It’s difficult to think on it, when Santino finally releases him from his fingers, wipes his hand on the sheets, and pushes his cock in. 

It’s good, John thinks to himself. Santino has a way of moving his hips just the right way to make him screw his eyes shut, for his mind to blank out and to allow him not to think about anything for a while. 

In the end, when John’s clawed his way to release, he’s even satisfied. Santino is as well. John still feels that something hasn’t quite clicked. He doesn’t understand Santino’s fascination. Ever since he met Santino, ever since he felt himself jumping headfirst into cold waves of winter sea, he’d felt jostled and unprepared, shocked from a long dream into reality. That’s, at least, how it feels when Santino kisses him, bites his lips, and leaves him in his room without even a goodbye. 

-

They find their rhythm eventually. John has never understood social cues which has made conversation difficult, but when one is not expected to talk at all, surprisingly, it makes things much easier on all of them.

They’re in a museum because Santino was curious about the new Goghain exhibit. They’d taken only private detail. John was there because Santino wanted to tease him and because John had grown on him, as he’d said, like a fungus. 

It’s a mistake. They’re attacked as soon as they step out of the exhibit, and John barely has time to push Santino down before their car is being blown up. For a moment, he finds himself on top of the Santino and he sees something in his green eyes spark. The moment passes and John’s grabbing his gun. 

Later, when they’re back in the secured villa, the headquarters of the D’Antonio family in New York, Santino’s forehead stitched from a deinty cut, he lets himself be pushed into Santino’s bed. 

John’s not gotten himself clean yet. He smells of burning and has soot and sweat on his skin. Santino doesn’t seem to mind. There’s a challenge in his eyes; also something John has never understood about him.

The spark in his eyes, at least, John understands. He bucks and rolls them over, pushing Santino into the sheets. The man puts up a token struggle, but he fists John’s shirt and brings him into another kiss. Santino bites, but John is used to it. He waits Sainto out until he tires of his own game and begins to hiss at John to do something. 

There is no slowness with Santino. No softness, though John is surprised to find that within himself in the first place. 

The prep is quick, Santino’s impatiences cutting the time short, though it hurts him in the end. The friction, as John pushes inside him, makes him go slow lest he hurt himself. Santino bites his shoulder, rakes him with his manicured nails, egging him on to go faster. After a bit, John gets tired of it, pins his hands, sets teeth to his voice box, and goes his own tempo. 

It seems to be the right thing to do. Santino doesn’t melt as much as he stops. 

Once John is completely inside him, and it’s been a few minutes to get accustomed to the stretch, Santino says, “Are you happy now, bastardo? Move, for the love of the holy, move--”

John moves. Thanks to the lube, the friction is bearable until Santino relaxes and gets used to his shallow thrusts that grind within him, pushing little high pitched noises from his throat. Santino seems to loathe them, if his expression is any evidence, but he doesn’t say stop. 

Eventually, even his face clears in clear pleasure. At that point John has released his hands, only because he knows he needs to brace better if he wants to really move his hips. Santino uses the chance to hug around his neck, cling, speaking all the while, “Harder, stronzo, I can take it.”

That’s all John is allowed but it’s also what he wants. He fucks Santino until his green eyes glaze over with lust, his fingers tremble where they hold him, and his cock spills all over John’s fingers and his own belly. 

John continues, fucking him through it, and then further until he’s hard again and cursing him out, tears in his eyes from overstimulation. Yet, he hugs John to himself, makes encouraging sounds because his voice has given up after he’d spent minutes shouting at him. When Santino comes, this time he doesn’t need a hand on his cock, and John follows after him, spilling into the condom. 

He disposes of it and goes to the bathroom to clean himself up. When he’s back with a washcloth to clean Santino up, the man is gone. 

-

John wouldn’t call it an affair. Santino has been taught not to be emotionally invested into anything except his family and himself. He owns things instead. Easily disposable, easily used up. Not sentimental. No attachments.

Santino has moods. His anger is quick to flash, and quick to burn out. Unless, of course, it’s a grudge. John doesn’t hold grudges. His own temper is something difficult to stir up, mostly because it includes hurting something he cares about. He hasn’t cared about anything in a long time. 

He watches Santino sometimes when John’s allowed to stay over. John never knows when, never knows why. Moods. 

He’s young, like those men he’d killed under that bridge had been young, but that’s as far as the similarities go. Santino is beautiful, what with the eyes, the curly hair, the way he moves in tantalizing inefficient lines. He’s also something John is learning he can’t have. Not the way he wants it, not how he wants it, not how, he supposes, Santino can offer. 

He was born into the parallel world, and he will die in it. That’s how things with people of his kind of pedigree go. When Massimo dies, either he or his sister will inherit his throne. Santino will have to marry and have kids, like all his predecessors before him. He will not love, because, John thinks, he’s been taught not to love anything but himself and his own empire, and he will live out to the very bitter end, like Massimo. 

John doesn’t see himself anywhere in that scenario. Then Santino is called off to Rome, and he leaves John behind. Shortly after his return, Santino stops inviting him to his room.

If he were to think on it, years later, John supposes that’s when the divide started. 

-

John wakes up in a hospital. He searches for attackers, then familiar faces, and finds he’s alone. A nurse pushes into his room after a while, and her eyes are hazel. 

“I’m Helen, I’ll be taking care of you,” she says. 

“Helen,” John parrots. 

He would think something about Troy or Illiad, but John never understood those stories. 

-

“You’re serious,” Santino says, for the first time shocked by John. 

“I want to retire,” John says. 

“So you’ve said.” Santino’s shock morphs into something else. If John had expected hurt, he’ll not find it on Santino’s face. It simply turns stormy as he contemplates. 

John has watched Santino spin words in his favor when negotiating with enemies, allies, his own family, using reminders of past loyalties or betrayals to suit his course. He doesn’t do that now. He doesn’t sigh. He reaches into his desk cabinet instead. 

John, for a maddening moment wonders if Santino will lift a gun and shoot him or jump over the table and stab him with a knife, but he does neither. He dumps a thick accounting book onto the table. John’s file is in there. 

There’s no small talk. Hasn’t been ever since Santino learned it doesn’t make John talk any more than usual and especially not since Rome.

“It won’t be cheap,” Santino warns him. 

His green eyes lift to look at John and they’re steel grey. 

“I don’t mind,” John replies. 

Santino’s mouth curls. “What’s her name?”

“Helen,” John replies, though he wishes he could have not. 

Santino’s hums, as if he even finds it funny. 

“One job, and a favor,” Santino says. He lifts a silver medallion. “You know what a Marker is?”

John shakes his head. Santino’s mouth stays curled. 

-

One job almost kills him. The Marker, a blood pack of a favor for a favor, feel somehow worse. John’s thumb still hurts as he drags himself to the Continental for one final patching up. There, Santino contacts him. 

“Good job,” he says. “You’re officially retired. I wish you all the luck, John.”

He disconnects before John can get in a word. 

-

Helen is warm and soft, and when John tries gentleness she doesn’t shy from it, as if it would break her. 

She loves him, which she says often enough for it to stop feeling as a surprise, and more of a warm reminder. It never gets old. Helen feels like a final sigh after the guns stopped shooting, and he hears, “All clear.”

She still ends up breaking. He’s there for her, in the end. He supposes that should count for something. The people he’d killed never got that. 

John wonders if it would have hurt like this, had he stayed with D’Antonios. Probably not, but then, he would have never learned that he could hurt like this or love like he did. 

After the funeral, he gets his one final gift from Helen, another reminder he thinks, of her unconditional love in a form of a beagle puppy. John resigns himself to a quiet existence. He will live because he must live, because he’s killed to live, and the dog will die, and he will die alongside it. 

That would have been better, John thinks, for everyone involved. 

-

Helen had talked a lot about letting go. Of things that weren’t needed, that didn’t bring joy, of memories, of regrets. She’d also told john to let go of her when the time came. She’d known him better than he’d even known himself. 

He supposes that going on a anger-fueled killing spree should have felt cathartic. It doesn’t. It just postpones the hurt a little, pushes it back, because he has to think about wounds, burns, guns, where to duck and where to shoot. 

When he’s finally done he goes back home, showers, mends his wounds, and goes to sleep. Days spiral like that, doing nothing at all. Healing. Scabbing over. The new dog doesn’t have a name. No attachments. 

His home gains a putrid air of sadness, one he’s learned from attending too many Italian funerals. The home had been more Helen than he. Now, it reminds him of her in all the ways that hurt. Some days are worse than others. 

When someone rings the door bell, John’s in the living room on the floor. He’d been playing with Dog, and drifted off. It never really mattered where he slept. He got used to it in Iraq. 

Dog hears the noise and jumps. He barks once, twice, goes to John to give him an impoloring look, then back at the doors when the bell rings again. 

John ignores it. Whoever it is, will go away. 

There’s another, insistent ring of the bell, before it goes quiet. John hears the lock click after a few minutes and expensive shoes clacking against the tiles. Dog starts growling, and someone curses in Italian. 

John doesn’t want to move. If the shoes didn’t, the voice gives the intruder away. 

Dog returns to John, snuffling his head. He hears another curse, then more scuffling until the impact of steps is absorbed by the carpet. Someone kneels behind him and then there are insistent fingers pressing against his neck. 

John takes a breath, grabs Santino’s hand and twists around, hand on his throat; a warning. Santino’s eyes widen. Then, he starts laughing. Santino’s never known fear, not in any healthy reasonable way. 

“Why hello, John,” he says, lashes fluttering. His pulse is quick under John’s fingers, but his body is relaxed, as if he expects to just be let go.

He’s older. Both of them are. It’s been a very long time. When Santino cocks his eyebrow, John says, “You’re trespassing.”

“Only because you decided to act uncivilized, and not answer the doors,” Santino retorts. John finally lets go of him and Santino is quick to get back onto his feet. 

John, no longer feeling comfortable laying down, gets up with as well. He looks past Santino to the opened doors. 

“Anyone else coming in?” John asks. 

“Just me,” Santino says. He goes to the doors to close them, while John retreats to the kitchen. 

“Café?” John asks. 

Santino follows him into the kitchen and sits at the table. “Please.”

Once John has a cup of espresso in front of Santino, he sits at the table as well. It’s mildly absurd to see Santino there. In the villa, Santino wouldn’t have been caught dead anywhere near the servant’s quarters. 

John takes him in. Santino’s aged, in that sort of way only those forced into a serious position age. There’s at least grace about it. Everything about D’Antonios has always been grace and blood.

“Why are you here?” John asks. 

Santino blinks. “I was sorry to hear about the wife,” he says, sounding pleasant and insincere, like he always sounded about everything. 

“Thanks,” John replies. He waits. 

Santino doesn’t sigh. He always found it undignified. He does let out a slow breath to reach into his pocket. A silver medallion clatters onto the table. The Marker. He pushes it towards John. 

“You swore an oath. Had you stayed retired I would have respected it. But you broke the rules of the arrangement, and now I want that favor,” Santino says, matter of factly. 

“Santino,” John says, and trails of. He’s looking at the grim skull pressed into the medallion’s face. An attachment. The last one to anyone and anything. 

He looks at Santino. He’s learned to grow serious, and this is the most serious John has ever seen him. He’s in the right, of course, and he’s dignified about it. He’s only doing what is his right. But John also knows that nervous tick in his eye. 

John realizes with a sinking feeling that Santino is just as beautiful as he’d been the first time John had seen him. He feels that careless, imulsilve, rush to the cliff and salty ocean water on his face as he surfaces. 

John takes a breath. That feeling had made him careless before. He waits, to see if it will leave him, but the longer he looks at the man, the stronger it gets. He’s older now, he supposes, and had time to reflect. He exhales. “Fine.”

-

John had met Gianna D’Antonio on a winter day in Brooklyn, and he’d met Cassian two years later, when she’d visited New York just before summer. 

Unlike Santino, she’d stayed in Italy, satisfied to spread her influence in her home. She’d known about John, of course, but he wasn’t her business. She didn’t like him, mostly because he’d come from a trade with the Serbs, then she’d liked him because she’d seen him work. Gianna was ruthless and smart. She knew when to strike. She knew how to lead. 

Santino isn’t any worse, John supposes. He’d developed the Brooklyn operation very well. In six years, he’d managed to absorbs the Russians, the Serbs, most of the Albanians and is now threatening the Cartel. For someone like Massimo, a hardened traditionalist, to name Gianna his heir, Santino must have done something incredibly stupid. 

John, as usual, doesn’t ask. He’s curious, but that’s not his business. 

From the moment John lands in Rome, he feels eyes on him. He realises it’s Santino’s clief of security in Continental where he goes to get equipped. So Santino’s keeping tabs on him. He supposes after six years, even Santino’s grown distrustful. 

He’d had looked somewhat surprised when John had agreed. It’s not a look Santino often wore. It has to be startled out of him, and nothing startles a man who has already seen everything. He’d been pleasant when he’d left John’s home. He gave John a name, date and place. That’s all it ever really took. 

Gianna’s eyes widen just like Santino’s when she sees him in the reflection of her mirror. It’s not a parallel John had ever wished to draw. 

“I had thought to consider you as a friend,” she says. It’s not begging. Gianna D’Antonio doesn’t beg. 

“And I you. But I have a Marker.”

“Whose?” 

“Your brother’s,” John says. 

John expects a frown, hatred, shouting; all that he has seen. What he doesn’t expect is a startled laugh. 

“Did you give it to him when you were warming his bed?” she turns around and asks. Now face to face, John sees the familiar resemblance between Massimo and her. 

John hadn’t thought Gianna, or anyone else, knew about Santino and he. 

“One of the conditions for my retirement,” John replies. He edges closer.

Gianna seems ruefully amused. She undoes her white jacket, and lets it slip to the floor. 

“I suppose I should have expected something like that from my brother. For all of his whining, he had let go of you just a too easily,” she says. She reaches behind her and undoes her dress. 

Nudity had never fazed John before, and neither does it now. If Gianna wanted to provoke him, it was a misstep. 

Something in what she’d said doesn’t click. She watches his face as she seats herself in her bathtub. 

“Of course, you wouldn’t know anything about it. I’m sure he seemed rather reasonable when he sent you on that suicide mission,” she continues. A shark always smells blood in the water. John must have done something to make her latch onto Santino like this. 

“How do you know?” John asks. 

Gianna, credit to her, knows what he’s asking. Her smile dampens into something else. “I know my brother. Once, before Rome, we were close. His obsession with you isn’t a foreign concept.”

John blinks. 

Gianna lets her hair down. Her hairpiece is bladed, but she isn’t going to hurt John. No, vicious, angry, indignant to be killed at the night of her success, she says in a fake sweet tone, “You never knew. He was in love with you, John. You broke his heart.”

“He could not be caught in bed with you, of course, because the word would have immediately gone to our father. Word had, eventually, gotten to our father regardless. Worse than women, Massimo has always hated finocchi.” She sits down in the tub. She slits one wrist than the other. 

“Why?” John asks. 

“I lived my life my way. I will end it my way,” she says. 

John, despite himself, takes her hand. It makes the blood rush quicker. 

“Now that I think of it, it’s gratifying to remember how angry he’d looked in Rome. All teary-eyed, throwing a tantrum because he couldn't have his favorite toy.” She smiles now. “And still, he couldn’t have you even if you were there. Who would accept a faggot for a boss?”

She leans her head back and takes a breath. “You will regret this.”

John waits for the exhale then puts a bullet through her head. 

-

John doesn’t know what to make of Gianna’s words, and soon he doesn’t have time to think very much on them. Cassian is angry. Cassian is also five years younger than him, which makes fighting him an exercise in strategy. Their bust into the Continental isn’t an accident. 

Later, at the bar, a gin-tonic and a bourbon in front of them, Cassian is not less angry. It’s just postponed. John doesn’t particularly want to kill Cassian. It wasn’t requested and it would be a waste.

“I had a Marker,” John says. Not often does he feel like he needs to explain himself. But he’s known Cassian from another life, and he’s also known how people grow attached, especially undamaged people like him. 

“Whose?” Cassian asks. The anger is barely riding under his skin.

John wonders if he should say. He wonders what Cassian would do if he did. He belongs to the D’Antonio’s one way or the other. It would be bad if he threatens Santino. 

John takes too long to reply, and so he doesn't. Cassian holds his eye and waits, but when no answer is forthcoming he snorts, and shakes his head. “I can make an educated guess. I see. You didn’t have a choice.”

“So. Are we good?” John asks. He was never good at guessing other people’s meanings.

Cassian turns. “No,” he says. “We’re not good. You killed my ward. Someone I was close to.”

So John had misunderstood. 

“If Gianna knew he held your Marker, she would have put him down in Rome. She should have.” Cassian shakes his head. “I’ll try to make it quick. Call it professional courtesy.” He leaves.

John considers his bourbon and drinks. It goes down like it has always gone down, scorching his throat, but he’d always liked the aftertaste. It reminds him of cease fire, two thousand miles from here and twenty years back. 

John should report to Santino though he doesn’t doubt he isn’t already informed about Gianna’s death. Still, no business on Continental grounds. He will have another drink. Gianna, at least deserved that. 

Now with time to spare, John considers what he’s been told. He wonders if he should do anything about it. 

Pain flares within him, quick and sudden, like being burnt from within, but there’s no knife and no bullet there. He feel eyes on him then, and when he turns, Santino’s chief of security is sitting behind him.

“Can I buy you a drink?” she signs. 

John shrugs. After she joins him at the bar and they get their drinks, she introduces herself as Ares.

“Loose ends?” John asks. 

Ares smirks. “Big guy might do something stupid. Chief isn’t taking chances.”

“D’Antonio’s own him,” John says. 

Ares shrugs. “He was private. And in love.”

John doubts that. Cassian might have felt attachment, but Gianna wasn’t someone who would welcome such weaknesses. She and her brother were taught better than that. Their own father killed their mother over Ricci land. 

“What happened in Rome?” John asks. 

Ares’ smirk is infuriating. John hasn’t felt that sensation in a very long time. She hops from her stool. “Talk to chief,” she signs. “He’s waiting for you.”

-

The museum is a security nightmare. Less so than Gianna’s rave in Rome but Santino had short notice to plan for his inauguration. 

Despite Ares’ work, Cassian slipped past her, managed to scrounge up a team, and bust into Santiano’s party. 

John knows he’s late. His heart hammers as he ducks and fires, removing all obstacles as he chases after Cassian. It’s never done that before, John thinks. From exertion yes, but he’s always been calm when firing a gun, when thinking, planning ahead. John doesn’t have a plan now except to not let Santino die. 

He shouldn’t be there. Winston had called him the morning after he reported to Santino, and told him that the Marker was respected. He is no longer bound to Santino. And yet. 

John takes a breath before going into the mirror exhibit. A woman’s mechanical voice is describing something about souls and self-reflection.

John hears a scuffle and sees Ares on her back, vicious, teeth bared, trying to get Cassian off her. She doesn’t see him. John takes aim and fires. Cassian’s body topples on top of her, heavy and warm. 

Ares grunts, and gets onto her feet. 

“You’re late,” she signs angrily. 

John blinks at her. “Santino?” 

Both of them turn when one of the mirrors rotates, to reveal Santino, no worse for wear except a few creases on his clothes. 

He looks at Ares then at John. His eyes widen and linger. “John...I wasn’t expecting you.”

“How about we get out of here first?” John says. Ares nods enthusiastically. 

Once Santino approves, she goes back to the museum to roundup survivors, check the kills, and get them a car. 

John stares. Santino has his hands in his pockets. 

“What happened in Rome?” John asks.

Santino arches an eyebrow. “Cassian told you?”

“Gianna.”

“Ah.”

John waits. Santino says nothing, and soon enough Ares comes to get them. She bundles them into the car and drives them away from the museum, presumably back to the villa. 

“You’ve invited yourself have you,” Santino notes glibly. 

John says nothing. 

Santino, John thinks, has never been a particularly patient man. He’d learned patience, but he has an explosive temper so the two cancel each other out.

A few miles away from the villa, Santino finally says, “Ares, make a stop under that bridge. Take a five.”

Already starting to protest, Santino simply puts up a hand to halt her, and nods. Ares pushes out of the car, unamused and unhappy. 

“Why are you here, John?” Santino asks. “I thought you would be happy that you can now go back to your retirement and that mausoleum you call home.”

“You were in danger,” John says. 

“So?”

“What happened in Rome?” 

“Son of a mule, what does that interest you? So Gianna said something about Rome, so what? She’s dead!”

There is the temper, John thinks. He waits it out. 

“Cassian said she could have put you down,” John adds.

Santino takes a breath. His eyebrows gather like storm clouds. “If you must know... my father was not amused when he found out about my preference for bed partners. Meaning men, not you. That, mixed with a thousand other little cuts, had him in a bit of a temper.”

John stiffens. He’d known about Massimo’s temper. Never felt it, but always knew. 

“It was relief, in a way, to see you go. You looked like a kicked dog after we...stopped. A wife. Ha! By the end I hated you as much as you hated me,” Santino says. 

“I never hated you,” John says. 

Santino huffs. “No, of course not. You don’t feel that.”

Santino’s trembling. He’s angry, yes, but that twitch in his eye also gives him away. John feels him heart thumping and now there is no excuse for it. He’s sitting in a car, danger long past, and he feels as if he’s in the middle of gunfire. 

Santino’s green eyes turn to him, alive in the low light and impossibly green. “What? You asked. I was no good as an heir anymore so Gianna took the chance. As did I, with the Marker.”

Attachment. John blinks, feeling pain spread through his insides. 

“Santino,” John breathes. 

“Don’t pity me. What do you want me to say? That I loved you? Half the time I was scared out of my mind about being caught. You were ours. On the retainer. I was your superior. It was fucked from the beginning.” Santino takes a breath. “You should have stayed retired,” he says bitterly. 

John reaches out. Santino doesn’t flinch as much as he tracks John’s hand until it lays around his bicep. He turns to John, a snarl on his face. 

“I told you not to pity me--”

“Santino,” John repeats. “Peace. It’s over.”

Santino’s eyes widen, then he barks out a laugh. “What is this? Damn you John Wick--”

John leans in and kisses him. Santino’s mouth is supple and warm. For a moment, there’s softness. John braces for the teeth, to be pushed back, slapped, scratched. Santino just lets the kiss end without kissing back and when John pulls away his expression is heartbroken. 

“What are you doing?” he asks, hoarse. 

John kisses him again. He shuffles closer, presses a hand to Santino’s leg, another on his jaw, and this second time Santino remembers to kiss back. There are no teeth. Santino pushes to taste him, to feel him, until he’s straddling John’s lap. His hands are cradling John’s face, and when he pulls back he looks just as confused as before. 

Confusion angers Santino, just like uncertainty does. He frowns and his voice is hard when he says, “John, answer me. I don’t take lightly to being...played about.”

“With Gianna’s death, there’ll be internal turmoil,” John says. “Let me help.”

Santino shakes his head. “You’re looking for work?”

“I’m retired,” John says. 

“Could you once in your god forsaken life answer a question?”

“I want to be there. In case something happens. Or doesn’t. You don’t own me. But I’ll still be there, if you want.”

“John...you walked away. You still can walk away. Don’t promise something you can’t fulfill.”

“Either it works out, or it doesn’t. It’s been a long time. I’d like to try.”

Santino looks at him, gaze jumping from one eye to the other, then he bows his head, cursing colorfully in Italian. “We need to have a lengthy conversation when we get back to villa. By which I mean you use adjectives, for a fucking change.”

“Alright,” John says. “Are we good?”

Santino snarls and kisses him. There’s teeth then, but not how John expected them. When Santino kisses him it’s sweet. It’s a promise. A contract. John closes his eyes. 

-

John wakes with the alarm. In his arms, Santino shifts, annoyed. His back is warm, just like his legs where they press against John’s shins.

Extraction proves possible, to turn off the whining, but ultimately unsatisfying when Santino blinks open his eyes and says, “Tomorrow, I break it.”

John kisses his cheek, his shoulder, presses himself alongside the warmth of his body. It’s still a novelty to hold Santino like this, though the man allows it only in the bed. 

“You’re such a dog,” Santino comments, never too cheery in the early mornings. John understands the sentiment. He’s fifty, and he’s hard, pressing against the swell of Santino’s ass. 

“You like it,” John replies easily. He slips lower, pushes Santino onto his back, and takes his hard cock in his mouth. Santino’s still stretched from the night before, but John still goes through prep so when he licks up Santino’s spent his fingers are already fucking into him.

“Forgot...about that,” Santino gasps. Once he’s hard again, grounding and fucking himself onto John’s fingers, John lets himself slide into him. 

Santino’s legs tremble around his middle. His nails scrape down John’s arms, his brow twisted in worry when he says, “Come on, fuck me, please, come on--”

It’s hard saying no to Santino, even now. John fucks into him, but he keeps it slow, just so they’re moving together, so he can feel his warmth, his breath, his pleasure. After a few attempts, John finds the right angle, and Santino closes his eyes, babbling in broken Italian.

John simply hums and lets it happen, watches as Santino comes undone; his favorite pastime. 

With John still hard inside him, Santino curses. “You’re not a dog, you’re a bull. Seriously, I just came--”

John hums and grinds inside Santino, softly, slowly, just circling his hips. Santino’s cock is softening, so John takes it in his hand, giving a few light tugs. 

“Ugh, you’ll kill me,” Santino curses. Yet, his legs widen, and he trembles, chin pushed up, asking. John descends upon his mouth, placing feverish kisses in layers, until he and Santino are breathing as one, straining as one, John’s orgasm rocking through him.

They stay joint like that until their breathing calms. “You,” Santino says, once John pulls out and lays on top of him, “after last night...I think my hips are dislocated.”

“Maybe you’re getting old,” John says. 

Santino sniffs but his chest rumbles. “I can’t believe you’re making jokes. Who will ever believe me? John Wick: the funny man.”

John smiles. It wasn’t his intention to be funny, but he’s learning more and more what to say to make Santino laugh. He likes that sound. It’s light, in face of everything. John kisses his shoulder. If we went for the mouth now, he would get mauled. 

“You’re heavy you know,” Santino notes after a while. 

“I’ll get up. In a moment,” John says. Santino hums in agreement. John feels a kiss landing in his hair. 

Later, Santino will get up, get dressed, cover the bruises, and leave. John will either worry or he won’t, because Santino will either live to come back, or he won’t. It makes John interestingly distressed, to think about Santino passing. Helen’s death had destroyed him in some ways. He doesn’t want to think what he will become if Santino dies as well. So John lingers, stealing already stolen moments, when he can close his eyes and pretend everything will be just fine. For a while, it works. 


End file.
